The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. The work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Steering of roaming describes a process for managing connectivity to a mobile network for electronic devices that are not subscribers of the network. This process allows mobile network operators to decide which other network (“foreign network”) their subscribers will use when roaming from their subscribed network (“home network”) to a foreign network is maintained by another mobile operator. Steering allows operators to manage their network to optimize bandwidth for their subscribers and enter agreements with other operators that are advantageous to all parties. Steering is typically accomplished via two methods: network based and subscriber identification module (SIM) based. These approaches may be used separately or together. In a network-based approach, a foreign network asks permission from a home network for the home network subscriber to join the foreign network while roaming. A steering system maintained by the home network operator will then decide to reject or accept the request to join the network. Network-based steering is dynamic and foreign network targets may change rapidly. Accuracy for selecting a desired network becomes difficult when there are three or more operator partners in the same area. In SIM-based steering, a preferred network list is contained within the SIM of the subscriber's mobile device. The list is typically maintained by an over-the-air (OTA) messaging system. This maintenance may suffer from significant logistic issues. Further, differences between handsets may make it difficult for a single system to service all available handset types. These challenges are only amplified when considering the explosion of internet-of-things (IoT) devices within the marketplace.